James Roper Paints the Imagination

James Roper is an abstract surrealist artist who works in digital art software like Corel Painter and Adobe Photoshop. Using vectors, Roper is able to create organic, editable shapes. The vector tool allows the artist to create curved edges for his shapes that can be changed at any time to suit the evolving digital painting. Not only can he change the shapes within his art works, Roper can also change the colors. This gives the artist full control over the psychedelic environment that he is creating.

James Roper’s designs and paintings are an unusual mix of abstract shapes and surrealist environments. He uses the abstract shapes to build a figure or idea that draws the viewer into contemplating the artwork. Hidden in the chaotic nature of Roper’s paintings is a sense of reverence and awe, as though the artist is trying to express an idea so much larger than himself that he struggles to fathom it.

Many of James Roper’s paintings contain distorted perspectives. The repetitive patterns created by the vector shapes create twisting perspective lines, confusing the eye and giving the painting a sense of convoluted meaning. In classical painting techniques, perspective lines are used to draw the viewer’s eye to the most important part of the painting. It is a technique in which the artist essentially says, “Look here. This is the most important part of the painting.”. It is not clear which part of the painting James Roper considers to be the most important. His perspective lines appear to be infinite, disappearing into the scenery of the painting with concluding in a symbol or important design aspect.

James Roper appears to have been influenced by the inner working of the human body. Many shapes within his Photoshop and Painter art works reveal similarities to the structure of muscles and internal organs. It is as though the artist has somehow taken a living thing and turned it inside out, revealing the working parts of life.